SEAN FOLEY CAN'T LOSE!! ----- ARE YOU USING STACK & TILT?

Right now Tigers new coach Sean Foley is in a perfect position just like Barack Obama was when he took over for George Bush. All bad news is Bushes fault – all good news is the current administrations doing. Doing it this way there is no line where the ‘Bush Stops Here.’ I see no mendacity in this purely human trait -- it is simply part of the Inheritance Syndrome [IS.]

How does it work in golf? Any time Woods plays badly it can be attributed to Hank Haney. Anytime Woods hits good shots, it’s due to Sean Foley. If Tiger never gets it back, it will be Hank Haney's fault -- if he does get it back it will be due to Sean Foley.

Hence the rule about how to become a great teacher: teach great players who are currently down on their luck, but are a lock to recover their game independent of your teaching. Tiger is a lock to recover so get ready for the Sean Foley era.

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Question from a reader of my golf page, Golf Insider, nationally syndicated on a weekly basis.
Q: I read an article in the NYT about the Stack and Tilt. Is there anything to this? I see the ads of all the tour players’ switching.

A: As you might imagine their ads don’t tell about the players switching out of Stack and Tilt like Aaron Baddeley and Mike Wier.

The NYT article quoted the founders of Stack and Tilt as follows: “…[Aaron] Baddeley was currently ranked 198th in the world and Weir 101st. At the end of 2008, Baddeley was ranked 37th, Weir 21st. …We don’t have to defend ourselves… Anybody who entered our system improved, and the players that left the system have gotten worse.”

This implies that the dismal rankings of these two stars are due to the fact that they left Stack and Tilt, but let’s put it in a more complete historical prospective. Prior to S&T Baddeley was one of the great young talents who won 2 Australian Opens before he was 24. And of course Mike Weir, one of the greatest players to ever come out of Canada, won the Masters in 2003 and was #5 in the world, before S&T. So another way to look at it is they took the number 5 player in the world and turned him into #21.

And changing Baddeley’s pure swing was like adding a scowl to the Mona Lisa. He was young and against all advice he scrapped his Mercedes for a go-cart then sputtered all the way to #198 ranking.

So it could be argued that S&T’s former poster boys got much worse and are now struggling to recover from S&T. In general you walk a slippery slope when you base your methods’ effectiveness on a few tour players. What are you going to say when they leave-- it’s the players fault?

I think the best answer to a player leaving a coach was how Butch Harmon answered Tiger Woods. Classy as always, Harmon had no public criticism of Woods while privately building rival Phil Michelson into a great player.

Are you changing your swing as much as Tiger?????

Tiger is changing his swing - again.

Remember Scotty, the cantankerous engine room genius in Star Trek. Captain Kirk would get in a jam and order Scotty to apply full power. Invariably, Scotty would plead, "I need more time, Captain, I need more time!" Well Tiger needs more time – and he can’t recover the time over the years spent chasing new swings. Just last year it seemed he was 22, a young gun with a new swing given to him by Butch Harmon – and he was unbeatable. Now as amazing as it seems Tiger will be 35 in December.


As an amateur golfer what could that possible mean to you? The answer is a lot -- if you are taking lessons from a bad teacher -- because it means that you receive a blast of different swing information every time a new guru and his method gets hot. Now you may not be aware of this because your bad teacher won’t admit it, but if you take lessons from a bad teacher you have changed your swing every time Tiger has --- and all those changes weren’t good for Tiger and they certainly are not be good for you.

If you take lessons from a bad teacher, over the last ten years, you would have been taught the Harmon Swing, the Haney Swing, Stack and Tilt, the One Plane Swing, Natural Golf with Moe Norman, Natural Golf without Moe Norman and now get ready to make another change, the Foley Swing – the bad teachers are currently waiting for the CD and the book so they can start teaching ‘Foley.’

Now please don’t misconstrue that I’m saying these teaching guru’s are bad teachers – most of them are wonderful teachers, but to prosper you can’t be jumping ship – where would Hogan have been had he listened to anyone or Nicklaus had he dumped Jack Grout or Faldo if he dumped David Ledbetter [ok so he did dump Ledbetter but look at his record post-David.]

I once taught along side a teacher who changed his swing theory, like he changed his socks -- and with each new theory he would watch a CD and then teach it to his students. His teaching model was a Frankenstein. He sounded very knowledgeable but he knew very little once the 45 minute CD info ran out. He’d drop names so heavy that if they landed on you, you’d be crushed but when it came to really knowing how to help his students using his au current method -- he couldn’t do it. He’d shake his head and complain that so and so ‘just didn’t get it’ but there were too many head shakes to be so-and-so’s fault.

Teaching is not the same as fashion. If you are a good teacher, you have a base which has taken you years to build up -- your model is alive and ever evolving but it’s not completely disposable.



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Is it Show up then Sign up or ….?


In what could be a 10 million dollar mistake [The FedEx first prize] Chad Campbell's is out of the FedEx Cup because he forgot to register for the Deutsche Bank Championship – he showed up but didn’t sign up. He did the same thing last year and was DQ’ed from the Sony Open.

Chad it’s Sign up then Show Up


 
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Avoid being ‘Laired’



Martin Laird on the 18th hole of the Barclays, blasted his 23 foot down-hill putt seven feet past the cup then left it short coming back up the hill to give away the championship with a three putt. He was a victim of the too-hard, too-soft combo that troubles most golfers. The next time you ram your downhill putt by the hole remind yourself to hit the up hill come-backer a bit more firmly to prevent being "Laired."

And yes I know he got the putt a little past the cup but had he hit it harder it would have held its line, so although it finished past the cup it was effectively short.